7 News Stories That Are Clearly Just Horror Movie Premises

Normally, when a scary movie claims to be "based on a true story," they're using that term fairly loosely -- which is weird, because the opening minutes of horror flicks are unfolding in real life, all around the world, and with hilarious frequency.

So as part of our never-ending campaign to shatter your delusions of security and leave you a quaking shell of a human being, it's our job to inform you that ...

#7. A Fish Orgy Likely Terrorized a Small English Town

Earlier this autumn, the unsuspecting citizens of Hampshire, England, were the victims of a nocturnal, pulsing hum that proved so annoying that residents escaped their homes to find some decent shut-eye. Scientists fingered a curious culprit -- tons of horny midshipman fish, whose courtship rituals require the males to boldly out-hum their sexual competitors.

But to the bleary-eyed citizens of Hampshire, they might as well have been a gangbang of Lovecraftian deep spawn, rutting phantasmagorically on hundreds of rickety and soiled undersea mattresses.

#6. We Found a 1,700-Year-Old Curse in Jerusalem

In horror movies, long-dead evils are usually brought screaming back to life when some poor schmuck without an internal monologue decides to read an old-ass incantation out loud. Well, reality's done cinema one better and slapped a thousand-year-old Roman curse tablet all over the damn Internet.

This curse was written by a magician on behalf of a woman named Kyrilla, who covered all her bases and summoned a veritable Super Friends of Greek, Babylonian, and Gnostic gods to "strike down and nail down the tongue, the eyes, the wrath, the ire, the anger, the procrastination, the opposition of Iennys."

But wait a minute, who's Iennys? A long-dead guy with whom Kyrilla had some legal problems. Something tells us that half a dozen shitty screenwriters saw this news blurb and feverishly began punching out a TV pitch that's "like Exorcist cum Ally McBeal."

#5. A New Island Pops Up Off the Coast of Japan

Like some relaxing mid-bath flatulence, a new island has appeared 600 odd miles south of Tokyo. Right now, it's a charred, black boob of molten rock, with a bubbling nipple of lava at the tip. Nobody knows for sure if it'll stick around, but if it does, the Japanese government would be "happy to have more territory." And with a population density like Japan's, you can't blame them for being excited for some new living space, even if it does mean securing real estate on Godzilla's blackhead.

#4. A Lost World Has Thawed Out in Alaska

In the past year, the recession of Alaska's Mendenhall Glacier has revealed the remnants of a 2,000-year-old forest, chock-full of wood and roots that haven't seen the sun since the Pontius Pilate administration. So far, researchers have yet to discover frozen remnants of animals or our arctic ancestors, so we're just going to hypothesize the worst and assume the stumps ate them.

Hunting the birds isn't really an option, as most anti-turkey partisans would basically end up firing their bullets into their neighbors' backyard. It's like Planet of the Apes, only with turkeys instead of apes and sensible gun control decisions instead of Charlton Heston.

Nico Nico DougaMeanwhile, having seen this video won't allow us to sleep ever again.

Again, this is supposed to be a totally innocent friendship sleep. There's no underage hanky-panky -- or is there? The app's designers recommend you pair the Oculus Rift headset with a body pillow sprayed with the "fragrance of a high school girl."

Nico Nico Douga"At which point your pillow will be covered in the fragrance of parental failure."

Yes, Skynet will become sentient because of a bunch of yutzes who just can't keep their mitts off of virtual jailbait. Also we're pretty sure the blackened hellscape that rose up from the ocean was the Earth's friendly way of saying, "So, the sky told me you need a place to maroon some creepy dudes, no?"

#1. The Danish Royal Family's Demon Painting

The Danish royal family has commissioned a family portrait that, when gazed upon, reveals that they are not a genial band of talking pastries, but rather a dead-eyed brood of omniscient hell regents whose cosmic evil existed before the Big Bang.

The portrait's painter, Thomas Kluge, has responded to criticism, claiming that the painting was "a satire," which is more or less the same excuse Tommy Wiseau used when midnight audiences started going apeshit over The Room.